5 absurd conspiracy theories that ended up being true

"At the heart of every legend is a grain of truth," is a
great quote to sum up these five conspiracy theories that most
people believed were false, but actually turned out to be quite
true.

Of course, as with most conspiracy theories, they seem
far-fetched and implausible until further evidence comes along and
either debunks or confirms much of what’s been said.

Here are five conspiracy theories that everyone thought were
utterly insane until that grain of truth was finally found:

1) The United States Navy attacked Vietnamese torpedo boats that
never really existed

It was reported that on the evening of August 4th, 1965, the USS
Maddoxbegan to engage in naval combat with North Vietnamese torpedo
boats shortly after being attacked without provocation. Lyndon
Johnson, who was president at the time, even went so far as to say
thatthey sunk two Vietnamese ships.

But, after some NSA documents were declassified, it came out
that the whole event was staged in order to justify further
involvement in the Vietnam conflict.

"I had the best seat in the house to watch that event, and our
destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT
boats there… There was nothing there but black water and American
fire power," said one Navy pilotand Medal of Honor recipient.

2) The FBI elaborately tried to suppress American political
movements they deemed "subversive"

Under director J. Edgar Hoover, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation conducted a secret program, called COINTELPRO
(counter-intelligence program), designed specifically to harass and
dissuadethe members of certain political movements.

Author of "The United States of Paranoia," Jesse Walker,
says:

"Under COINTELPRO, FBI agents infiltrated political groups and
spread rumors that loyal members were the real infiltrators. They
tried to get targets fired from their jobs, and they tried to break
up the targets’ marriages. They published deliberately inflammatory
literature in the names of the organizations they wanted to
discredit, and they drove wedges between groups that might
otherwise be allied. In Baltimore, the FBI’s operatives in the
Black Panther Party were instructed to denounce Students for a
Democratic Society as "a cowardly, honky group" who wanted to
exploit the Panthers by giving them all the violent, dangerous
"dirty work." The operation was apparently successful: In August
1969, just five months after the initial instructions went out, the
Baltimore FBI reported that the local Panther branch had ordered
its members not to associate with SDS members or attend any SDS
events."

This theory was proved true after a group of anti-war activists
broke into an FBI field office where they found a huge stash of
documents proving that the program existed.

3) U.S. Military officials were going to kill innocent people
and blame it on Cuba

If you can remember back to the Cold War era, one of the biggest
Communist threats to America at the time was our neighbor,
Cuba.

They tried to rid Cuba of its leader, Fidel Castro, in 1961, but
failed. So, they came up with another idea called ‘Operation
Northwoods.’

All of the Joint Chiefs of Staff approvedof ‘embarrassing plans’
to kill innocent people in order to paint the picture of a
dangerous, irresponsible Cuban nation. These plans included firing
mortar rounds into the United States Guantanamo naval base, blowing
up aircraft and ammunition supplies, and even blowing up an entire
ship in the harbor.

The most extreme operation they had plannedwas to implement a
scare-tactic campaign in Miami. This would involve sinking a boat
full of Cubans on their way to Florida with carefully planned
explosions, as well as the arrest of Cuban agents, and documents
detailing Cuban involvement.

4) The CIA hired prominent American journalists to disseminate
propaganda through the media and gather information

In the 1950s during the Cold War, the Central Intelligence
Agency of the United States used American journalists to sway
public opinion and gather information in an operation called
‘Operation Mockingbird.’ This operation would be in effect for over
three decades.

Journalist Carl Bernstein explains the operation for Rolling
Stone back in 1977:

"Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were
tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and
overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services
— from simple intelligence-gathering to serving as go‑betweens with
spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with
the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were
Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered
themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most
were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their
association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and
freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy
business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category,
full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many
instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform
tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s
leading news organizations."

This long-standing program was revealed by the Church Committee
in a full report stating that the "CIA currently maintains a
network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who
provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence
opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals
provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers
and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio
and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other
foreign media outlets."

5) The CIA performed ‘mind control’ experiments on unknowing US
and Canadian citizens

One of the craziest theories to have been confirmed is the CIA
program notoriously known as MKUltra. This program’s purpose was to
develop a further understanding of biological and chemical weaponry
during the Cold War. Eventually,the program grewto include much
more, however.

Research expanded into areas like: promoting the intoxicating
effect of alcohol, how to increase usefulness of hypnosis, how to
make a person more resistant to privation, torture and coercion
during interrogation or brain-washing, how to induce amnesia, how
to produce shock and confusion for long periods of time, and how to
manifest physical disablement in humans via paralysis of the legs,
acute anemia, and other methods.

Operating under front companies, the CIA worked with over 80
different institutions to run experiments on different human
subjects. The Church Committee attributes at least two deaths of
American citizens to the program. These top secret files revealed
by the Church Committee were destroyed by CIA Director Richard
Helms in 1973.

Bonus (Theory)! Hitler didn’t die in Germany, he died in
Argentina

While this has yet to be proven, one of the most prominent
conspiracy theories floating around today is the one that tells us
that Hitler did not take his own life in Berlin in 1945, but rather
he escaped to Argentina where he lived for another 17 years.

British journalist Gerrard Williams makes a compelling case in
his new book that "Hitler died an old man in South America." The
book tells us that Hitler raised two daughters in Argentina before
passing away in 1962. Additionally, they claim that the skull
fragment believed to be from Hitler’s gunshot wound to the head is
actually from a young woman.

"Stalin, Eisenhower and Hoover of the FBI all knew there was no
proof of him dying in the bunker," Williams tells us.